Longtime firebreather and former citypages.com managing editor Mark Gisleson is having a bit of sport with his old employer by noting its Google PageRank (4 of 10) is now lower than his one-man site's (5). Gisleson claims CP.com once sported a 7, but has no screen shots.

Google PageRank is one of those black boxes I've never fully understood, but it basically measures how many people link to you, rather than pure readership. In other words, not popularity so much as influence — especially important since the rating affects your placement in Google's search results.

Just out of curiosity, I decided to check the rankings of several local sites (and some national sites for context).

Keep in mind, we're judging home pages and section fronts here. Most individual stories have too few links to get a Google PageRank, so if linkers bypass a home page, the site may seem unreasonably unpopular. Web managers can also manipulate their homepage rank by directing all internal pages to it.

There's more explanation here and here. For you true math-heads, the scale is logarithmic, not geometric.

OK, here goes:

10
Google
CNN

9
New York Times
Twitter

8
Facebook

7
Star Tribune
MinnPost (!)
MPR
Drudge Report

6
WCCO-TV
Fox9
KARE11
The Uptake
Minnesota Independent
Minnesota Democrats Exposed
Braublog

5
KSTP-TV
Politics in Minnesota
Secrets of the City
MnPublius
Finance and Commerce
Mediation
Norwegianity

4
Twincities.com (Pioneer Press)
City Pages

3
City Pages Blotter
Minneapolis St. Paul Business Journal

Counterintuitiveness abounds. MinnPost at the same level as the Drudge Report? Could it be Drudge is more about outbound than inbound links? The PiPress keeping company with City Pages at the bottom? (Note: Two corrections: MPR moved from 6 to 7, and Uptake from 4 to 6. I was using some inferior bookmarks.)

Tech savants, your insights welcome and appreciated in the comments.